1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to presentation of status information regarding a plurality of print jobs and more specifically relates to methods and structure for presenting an easy to use and easy to understand display of the status of a plurality of print jobs being processed by one or more print servers.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In some printing enterprises, one or more print servers are used for processing print jobs—i.e., to layout, format, and render print jobs for transmission to printing engines. Users submit print jobs to the print servers and await the desired output from a print engine coupled with a print server processing the print job. Individual users and/or enterprise administrators often wish to view the status of print jobs being processed by the print servers. Present techniques for viewing such status generally present the status information in a complex, confusing, hard to understand format. For example, all print jobs may simply be listed in a textual, tabular format such that the user/administrator has to review a lengthy list of job status information to locate particular jobs that may require attention. Or, for example, the status a single pint job may be presented to a user in response to a user's request for status of a particular job. In general, prior techniques do not provide a broad overview of the status of a plurality of print jobs but rather focus on the status of a single print job for which a user is requesting the status.
Thus, it is an ongoing challenge to improve the ease of use for a user in presenting the status of a plurality of print jobs being processed by one or more print servers.